ABSTRACT
Providence in Judaism is understood as God’s foreseeing care for his creatures. According to the Bible and the Talmud, God directs the course of human affairs and the destiny of the Jewish people as well as the life of each individual. In the Talmud it is written, ‘No man suffers so much as the injury of a finger when it has been decreed in heaven’; it is central to the Rosh Hashanah service. There is the Ani maamin prayer: ‘I believe’.
The Problem of Evil is examined (‘Where was God when the sufferings of the Holocaust occurred?), and the Free Will Defence is found challenged. The notion of God as Provider is met with philosophical scepticism, leading to questions about the nature of ‘belief’ in God, self-deception and problems of ‘deciding to believe’ – explained by means of Cave’s Clarissa example. Wittgenstein on religion as tightrope walking is touched upon.
